I am the alienator

I am an alientor. You know me well. You lived with me once and you witnessed my behaviour patterns but you did not spend time studying and internalising them. I know your behaviour patterns better than you know them yourself. I know how to measure you, test you and control you. I know what your hooks are and I know that the depth of the love for your children is a weakness I can exploit. I am an emotional terrorist. I will terrify you into submission. You will do as I tell you to do, if you do not, I will take your children away.

I am an alienator, you didn’t notice that when we lived together but I began my work long before we went our separate ways. I created fissures and fractures within our family and I managed and manipulated reality, though for a long time you did not notice that.

I am an alienator, at times in the past you felt a chill wind blow through you when my moods changed as I raged and then sweet talked you to smooth the ripples in your growing awareness. My mind is distorted but the projection of shadows causes you to believe it is yours which has failed you. Eventually you came to believe that it was you and not I who was crazy. You shivered as I turned down the gas light.

When you appeal to the outside world for assistance I will turn my most charming face to the sun and open my arms wide and beseech them to believe that I only want the best for my children. I will widen my eyes and up turn my palms and say ‘what can I do when they don’t want to see you’ and suck into my airspace all those who attempt to bring change to the lives of the weapons I know I can use.

My children are assets, collatoral, extensions of plans that I make to wreak my revenge upon people who challenge my views or attempt to remove the control that I have in my life.

My children are satellites orbiting sunshine coming only from me – you could never compete with the warmth that I wind around each of their hearts so that only my love is enough; making yours surplus, not needed, discarded like clothes that you bought and I won’t let them wear.

I am all that they need.

You are not.

When our love ended my rage recruited our children to a campaign of revenge that joins us together against you.

In my mind your betrayal awakened the traumas of people long dead and ignited the fuse that lead to the bomb that blew up our lives. Now, the souls of our children are hostage to wrongs which come howling from hell and you are helpless to hold back the tide which will sweep you and they to the death that is living with losing your children whilst they are still breathing. Your loss not mine which you and not I will have to survive.

Sometimes you mirror me, two perfect projections that weave webs of destruction that sever our children in two, one side light, one side dark, you there in the shadows.

But mostly it is because I cannot see my behaviours, I am blind to the sight of myself in the mirror. The only reflection I need is the love of my children to feed me and give me a sense of my self which I lost even before I was born.

I am the alienator, annihalator, terminator. My aim is to end by fair means or foul, your place in the hearts and the lives of your children.

I am easily spotted by those who know me but invisible to those who do not. You will spend your time, your energy and money telling them I am behind this whilst I smile and continue to shred the trust our children once held in you. I am an alienator even when I do not know it and the failure to see the shadows I cast in the projections I throw onto you, is the fault of a system so blinded by bias it is frozen like the minds of our children, the children being harmed right under the noses of those who should know how to help them but sadly, do not.

In the plain sight of you and of them, the lives of the children you love are stolen, erased and extinguished.

And your anguish and pain are the gifts that I treasure.

And your suffering compensates for the things I perceive you to have done.

And whilst chaos reigns and the system colludes with my delusions, the power I seek remains mine.

You know this animal and pathology so incredibly well. It’s a remarkable piece of work.
It’s a hard read when you know what this is.
Thank you for publishing an amazing piece on such an important issue and disorder.

I sometimes think of it as a faulty jig-saw puzzle. If you see only a few of the pieces it looks like everything is going to fit together into a nice picture, but when you start to see more and more of the pieces you realise that they do not fit together and something is very wrong. The CAFCASS worker or SS worker who comes along only ever get to see a few of the pieces (each event has a perfectly reasonable explanation: “the children feel they are missing out on spending time with their friends if they have to spend time with their other parent”). Hence CAFCASS/SS are satisfied that all is well and good (“This parent is child focussed, the other is just not realising that the children are growing up and wanting to do their own thing”). The alienated parent is desperately trying to get them to see all the pieces (“actually it is not just me they are not seeing, they are also prevented from seeing their friends.”), but there is not enough willingness and not enough time to discover that the jig-saw doesn’t fit together.

CAFCASS/SS are, IMHO of course, slothful, uneducated, careless, uncaring, arrogant and so on and so forth. They make no attempt to understand alienation and care not for the children let alone the alienated parent.

The first CAFCASS officer I came across thought it would be alienation only if the child said “I want to see Dad but mum won’t let me” – I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry! Of course I ended up crying!

We are well into the 21st century. There is enough information available on alienation for the court system to deal with the more effectively and robustly. Yet no sign of appropriate and significant changes afoot.

You can show CAFCASS all the pieces but if they can’t/won’t “read” or “decipher” then the dire situation continues and worsens.

I don’t think we disagree – it is covered under no willingness, no willingness to care, no willingness to learn and become educated, no willingness to think that children deserve two parents etc. You can show them all the pieces but with no willingness to see and it doesn’t make any difference. If you are not prepared to see the bigger picture you will not spot the alienation. The alienator will make it easy by portraying a picture of the concerned parent who can explain away every single event in a child focused manner greatly helped by the double standard for acceptable behaviour by a parent with residence and one without.

I’ve been enjoying, and deriving solace from, Neil Gaiman’s ‘Coraline’, a story of a girl who finds a door from her family’s flat into a flat in a parallel world, where she is entrapped by her sinister ‘other mother’, and has to find a way back to her true parents. At one point, Coraline accuses the other mother of having stolen her real parents, and the other mother conjures up an animated image in a mirror, of Coraline’s parents returning from a holiday:

“‘How nice it is, not to have Coraline any more,’ said her mother with a happy smile. “Now we can do all the things we always wanted to do, like go abroad, but were prevented from doing, by having a little daughter.’
‘And,’ said her father, ‘I take great comfort in knowing that her other mother will take better care of her than ever we could.'”

Coraline doesn’t believe this to be true and says so, whilst at the same time having doubts – but when she sees anger in the other mother’s face she becomes certain that the image is an illusion. She is beginning the process of escaping from the other mother’s controlling power and finding her way back home to her true family.

This is not a story ‘about’ parental alienation in any simple sense. It’s much broader and deeper than that. Gaiman uses imagery from dreams and myth to depict adult emotional abuse of children and ways in which a child can become aware of this and begin to resist it. This certainly throws a lot of light on parental alienation, though. I was particularly struck by the way in which the parallel world created by the other mother is small, sketchy, impoverished, second-hand, a parody of the real world that Coraline has left. Coraline comes to realise that the other mother “couldn’t truly make anything… she could only twist and copy and distort things that already existed.” I thought about this when I read your alienator’s remark that “My children are satellites orbiting sunshine coming only from me.”

Crazy because that is what my 3 daughters were made to call me but they shortened it to “T.O.M.” so they could have the girls call his NEW wife Mom. The one he left me for. She reminded me of the other mother and I believed that my girls were seeing through her fake mirage of perfect mommy, it came through easily in her voice, her promises vs. what she actually did. I gave them too much credit, for 8 years. I thought the negative trash talking was making her look bad, but as teens they just bought right into it in rebelion to the one actual parent they had, they had already been primed for years. 15 years of me teaching them right from wrong and love and peace could not be completely erased by 4 years of hate and negativity and blurring the lines where wrong is wrong, could it? They have to be in there somewhere…
My youngest was always the most perceptive, and she indeed has started to fight, all brought to a head by her sudden realization that they are extremely racist and want to force this hate on her as well.
My favorite quote from Coraline is for my daughter as she battles this beast alone, no backup, her older sisters are both still consumed. “Being brave doesn’t mean you aren’t scared. It means you are scared, really scared, badly scared, and you do the right thing anyways.” i have alot of faith riding on her bravery. No contact no conduit wrongfully blocked intensely for one year and only hearing her voice in one phone call then, 3.5 years before that but she is VERY brave. I have never stopped fighting for her or her sisters although they have aged out.

What a sad, sad , sad, and dark, world the alienator lives in, within the confines of their mind. This further compounded by the alienators perpetrating family and other cronies.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it now, and will in the future : Karen, it’s as if you know my children’s mother, and family, inside out… You have just described them spot on – I could never have articulated this, but then I’m the weak alienated that they have deliberately exploited. Not only is it painful to have experienced this (and still am), but it is also painful that this is a very real pattern that is a reality everywhere.

Some of these articles really make the stomach churn.

Why, oh why, oh why, do the courts and court “professionals” NOT know all this??? He laments and keeps asking …

Because most of the courts are filled with their own kind. They will protect their own so that they will not be found out themselves. Sociopaths, narcissis, etc. All these labels mean the same thing to me. Monsters without a soul. There has got to be a judge that isnt like the rest of them. Seek and you will find.

Yes, good point. I did note that the courts are rife with narcissistic so-called-professionals. Good point, I hadn’t thought of that,

I often think that a change will come when a senior Judge himself/herself becomes alienated.

Having said that, there was one judge I came across at the previously-named (now called something else) Principal Registry who seemed to have some understanding. But then, he’d also come across Karen somewhere along the line too. Can’t remember his name now – been almost 6 years.

People, HHJ John Mitchell is the one I came across at the Gee Street site of the (former) PRFD. I understand he still sits there. This judge seemed to have a relatively good understanding of alienation all the way in 2010. He seemed to be aware that the longer there is no contact, the worst it gets. I am hoping he understands more now. He has written a book on the Childrens Act as well. I don’t know if it is possible, but if those of you lucky enough to still have your matter in the court process (yes, I really do mean that!) can get your hearing in front of him, then it is possible that it will help you.

Our custody litigation turned into what others describe as “worse than terrorism”. That is putting it mildly. I had full custody and they changed that and my son’s passport because the kidnapping party ” wants (wanted) to go to France” I have not seen or heard my child in 7 years and am still in shock, can find no help or even humane consideration.

Thanks for writing this Karen I am a Grandmother of Children that this is happen to and do not know which way to turn my Daughter ended her marriage of 18 years and the kids felt like that need to stay with there dad. we have had little or no contact with the kid over the last year we need your prayers and grace from The man above to get through this.The little boy got a cell phone first day he called us he was 11 he called all the time till the cell bill come in and then it came to a stop and the Girl 16 we can’t text her or call her we figure that they have the our phone numbers blocked .

I’ve noted before that when people write from total commitment they often fall into a rhythm – it’s an important element of rhetoric. Much of what Bob Geldof writes, for example, falls into a natural iambic hexameter. The rhythm in this piece, Karen, is anapestic – try it and you’ll see how it fits. Here’s just an example: “is the FAULT of a SYStem so BLINDed by BIas”. What you have written is almost poetry; mesmerising.

that is exactly how it came out of me Nick, it is how I heard it being spoken in my mind. Actually, if I am very honest, when I write I am rarely doing so with my conscious mind, sometimes it feels as if I am observing the words as they are being written – almost like channelling. I think what happens to me is that I absorb the feelings of what I am doing and then I process them by writing about them. That it feels spot on to people (which is what a lot of people say about this way of writing) is because it is the sum total of other people’s experience which is being chanelled. Many times I don’t really know what I have written until I go back and read it.

Brilliant Karen. It summarises the alienator in full, is artistic in its delivery and emotional poetry. I’m going back through mediation and probably court proceedings. I will ensure mediator and Judge get a copy of this. Steve x

This whole blog should be viewed and understood by ALL those working in family law!

As well as this article, it’s probably worth showing the “I am an alienated child” as well as “First Encounters with an alienated child” to judge/cafcass/guardian/so-called-experts. These are just 2 that popped out skimming the titles of the titles. So much else here as well.

But then it becomes too much as they are all so slothful! So then perhaps you have to highlight parts.

And you have to be strategic in your presentation – both timing and content and related to the audience.

– First, show them the dire position for the child. Get them feeling it and want to, have to, need to, do something.

– Then add to that the alienator’s stance which seems never to change. [A statement I hope is completely untrue!!!!]

– Then show how you are a good parent (or committed to learning to be so) and how depriving you from the child is nothing short of cruelty.

I’m probably totally unqualified to give all this advise as I ultimately failed in the court process. However, I also got pretty far….just not far enough.

good luck everybody

(Sorry Karen, I almost began using this blog as a venting platform myself)

You despise me to my face and sneer at me when no-one else is looking so that others won’t see that you are not all sweet and innocent. You maintain the moral high ground in proclamations you make about what you perceive are my shortcomings.
You have sent me to Coventry.
Although you rarely see me in public, when you do you pretend as if all is well. You put on a show so that no-one would think you reserve such hatred for me.
You threaten our children with complete abandonment should they come and spend more time with me than you would allow. The bitter rejection our child suffered when you put all their meagre belongings on the doorstep with a final ultimatum, “It’s me or him” was such a cruel act but nevertheless effective in keeping the children under your control. You must have realised I didn’t have the heart to deny our children a life completely without you, so back they went under your control. Nor for that matter would I be capable of denying our children their mother.
At school you want to be the only authority on our children’s education. I am not welcome in the world you share with our children.
You accuse me of being a “control freak” and yet you seem to wield almost total control over our children.
I have long since given up hope of any authority figures such as Judges or Teachers or Family members convincing you of the importance of continuing to share the parenting of our children.
After the court process had had its’ final of final hearings and the dust had settled I began to realise how ill I was and I began the long slow process of healing myself. I began to make amends.

I am the target parent and I know you better than you think.

I saw the way you behaved towards your mother, how you despised her for being so bossy and domineering towards your father. I can see how much the relationship you had with your parents has made you who you are; how you seem to be psychologically ensnared in your mother’s controlling games, even though you hated her so much. This is not your fault; nor for that matter is it my fault that I carry the baggage of my relationship with my parents to the grave.
Since our departure I have learnt that I am in control of my own destiny and it is very much something I can learn to control better. I have more responsibility and control now than I ever thought I could have had. I am more self-assured than at any time in my life. I can live without you; I can accept you for who you are, the way you live, the things you do. In a funny sort of way I have come to appreciate you mostly for your positive endeavours. I no longer worry that you have a negative opinion of me, that you tell our children that their father no longer loves them.
Over the course of time our children have been re-assured by my presence, warts and all.
I cannot change you into someone more amenable to sharing the upbringing of our children. This is something you will have to do for yourself if you should choose to do so. There was a time you told me I was a good parent and this is the thought I hold in my head which suggests to me that all this alienation malarkey is a bit of a red herring. I have decided to say that you are a normal adult with tendencies to alienate given certain environmental and behavioural conditions. I was worried when we first met that you seemed to be so strong in your opinions and that you were so condescending of your foes.
You are not my mother; you are the mother of our children. I have broken away from the shackles that gave you the respect I would have reserved for my own mother. I am no longer immobilised by the notion that your word is final nor necessarily good for my situation.
Give it your best shot, do your worst if that’s what you want. You are now a side show. Your desire to do ill only reflects on your need to do so. I refuse to be neither fazed nor encumbered by your behaviour. I will no longer criticise you, your entitlement to your opinion being equal that of anyone else.
Thankfully I have been able to maintain relationships with our children and although the path has been rocky at times I do not blame you for all that has happened. It is only since I have become more aware of how to make a difference, including you and our children, that the children have become more at ease with themselves.
Since you probably won’t get this note, you may tear it up without even reading it I can only leave it here for others to read. I wish you well. I am sorry if you still wish ill of me and want to pretend that I am not worthy of being the father of my children. I understand why you have worked yourself into such a state and why psychologically you might be trapped in this state of mind. I only hope that you can find a way out of this; I think there is but it’s not for me to decide your fate.

I am the target parent and I know you better than you think.

Rather than accuse you of bad behaviour and get myself all worked up because you failed to agree to my terms which I saw as just and reasonable for our children, I accept your terms, your attitude, and your beliefs. I am here amongst your friends and mine, on talking terms with your relatives, connected with school and clubs that are the life of our children. I refuse to be ousted from their lives. Because I am here and involved it is very difficult for you to condemn me. Could such a man be responsible for such heinous acts? All I see is a Dad going about his daily business doing Dad stuff. My business with our children is just that. Thank you so much for making me a Dad, quite the best thing that has ever happened to me, and the making of me.

Hi Karen
I read this and thought it a bit “flowery” compared to your usual posts, but by god you are spot on, it is like you are watching every move of the whole scenario of my ex,me and our lovely child, scarily accurate. If the whole situation is so easily read you have to wonder why the Family Court system and CAFCASS etc seem to not acknowledge the existence of alienation. Excellent read as usual.

This is so over bearingly precise it’s crazy how this description fits the situation I have so exact so perfect yet there is hundreds of not thousands of them and yet they freely walk among us and carry on with their cruelty in the cold light of day undisturbed in punished for the most horrific crimes to our children !

Reblogged this on Breaking Sarah: A Family Broken and commented:
I have to reblog this. It is a true and very-well worded portrait of the mind of parents and other familial influencers who, in their own interest and for their own selfish reasons, turn children against the other parent. My son’s father is an alienator and my sisters help him along in it. READ this, take it in – if you see yourself in it, please consider what you are doing to your child, not just your ex! And if you, like me, are on the receiving end, I sincerely hope that someday your relationship with your child begins anew.

I have never seen my nightmare so perfectly worded, described in detail! I have never understood how so many others are so blinded by alienators. I shared this to my blog so my followers can see exactly what it is I have been trying to explain. Thank you!

My ex has a swinging brick for a heart. She is stone cold and doesn’t care about anything or anyone. She treats our child like a new possession and clutches hold of him in a deranged manner. Someone once commented that “she is wired wrong”. She most definitely is, but I fell for her because she seduced me and was very attractive and charming. I’ve discovered that she is incredibly selfish and narcissistic. She always seems to ‘play the victim’ yet dishes out the abuse at every opportunity. I am a sensitive but very strong man. She tried to break me but failed. I struggle every day, deflecting all the attacks, false allegations and hostility from my ex. I love my son very much and will continue to fight to see him and be in his life. The family court system needs to recognise the type of abuse that these toxic individuals dish out and the way they alienate children from the other parent.

Kids know their own truth in the end & when loved & supported by daddy & new wifey (intelligent men don’t pick a psycho twice) the alien will eventually alienate herself! Hens have finally come Home 2 roost in r case! Pls stay strong do not loose contact know matter how much evil they try & give kids a plan b 4 when they r fit 2 escape! 😘🙏🏽❤️

YOU HAVE IT NAILED, MY EX IS WILL GET CAUGHT. YOU CAPTURED THE DEVIL THAT I WAS MARREID TO FOR 17 YEARS AND TOOK MY KIDS AND ALL MY BELONGINGS IN A VERY TRICKY CONNIVING MANIPULATIVE WAY. THANK YOU FOR SHARING YOUR SKILLS. I HOPE THIS GETS CORRECTED ASAP. MINE IS A VERY HIGH LEVEL CROOK MANAGING 18B AT A HEDGE FUND IN SF. MY STORY IS TERRIYFYING AND I DONT WISH IT ON ANYONE. THANK YOU FOR SHARING INSIGHT SO NOT TO MAKE US VICTIMS FEEL ISOLATED.

Im a little speechless…. to see it, put so clearly exactly where I find myself right now. The moment he realised, I had stood up and he had lost his power over me, he turned to the children….. jnowing that they were the one thing I would gladly give my life for.

What a spot on account of the alienator. I also loved reading the comments, gave me an idea for the next post on my blog courtcollision.blogspot.com (the alien will eventually alienate themselves). I pray for this daily. I will add a link to this post so more can learn, thanks.

The problem remains that children have a need to love both parents. To fight the alienator is to either remove their influence by court involvement (unlikely to actually occur in reality) or by virtue of the adversarial court process , give fuel to the alienators fire. Either way the children remain alienated or are distanced from one or other parent. The answer might lie in identification and treatment for personality disorder and a recognition that children become integrated tools of the alienator’s disorder but they themselves are not the solution.

“….children have a need to love both parents” – this is exactly what makes an alienation a crime! Alienating one parent from a child. OK, temporarily maybe, like a separation, might be necessary in the case if a parent is abusive. But give him/her a chance to change. It is change that is necessary, not alienation. I am the abuser, which I recently discovered about myself, and I’m working on my personality. I do not see my children for now, but am doing everything on making the improvements, especially on myself. There is no way I will allow alienation. Thanks to this and other articles for the awareness.

The following was written by an alienator to his ex-wife, 15 years after the divorce, and about 7 years after the children stopped speaking to their mother. The children are now in their mid 20s…. Does this sound familiar?

“This letter effectively terminates any relationship between us.

Since my children, J and A, have also effectively terminated their relationship with you, this letter should represent the last communication between you and my family.

You will have noted the use of the pronoun my in the previous sentence. That was done consciously as you have driven your children away through a combination of indifference, ineptitude and lack of diligence. You allowed G and his entourage of family and friends to invade your home, abuse your children psychologically and physically, effecting lasting damage upon them.

I have been able to watch my children struggle with and overcome the damage, developing into caring, productive and thriving adults. It has been a journey of pain, promise and determination, and my participation in it is one of the greatest endeavors of my life. Watching their growth and maturation has been one life’s great pleasures for me.

You will have to live with the regret of both causing their struggles and missing their growth. Perhaps your life coach and your alienated forum will provide you with a means of coping.

In the obverse, J, A and I will continue to share each other’s lives, thrill with each other’s successes and support each other in times of need. That is my family.
buh bye,
D (the ex)

Link to this article left on the “Loose Women” facebook page where a discussion and poll was started regarding “Have you ever felt jealous of your daughter?” (In the hope of spreading the word further).

What a magnificent article! Alienating, though, may come from an older sibling, not only another parent. From an asshole who is lazy and incapable of making efforts, who accumulates a grudge for you, over the years, because you’re pointing at his faults and trying to help him out. Then, he plans everything carefully, takes one of his siblings – the most sensitive one and the closest to you at the same time – and is poisoning his mind with “true stories” however diluted with his own imagination – in fact, he sincerely believes in truthfulness of his stories, for he meditated on them for a long-long time, like making a movie scenario or writing a novel. By doing so to the younger child, he is pronouncing the sentence of his vengeance towards you. It doesn’t matter whether you love him – he won’t feel it. Only hatred. And vengeance. The only things that drive his mind.

Hi Karen, I have a question regarding this topic. A lot of what you’ve written is so familiar to the behaviors and events that have occured in within my dysfunctional family. However there is also a major difference regarding the fact that I was the child and my mother was the one turned against me by my father who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. In this circumstance how would you define the terminology on “alienation”?

Please excuse me if the answer is obvious however I have been struggling to think clearly since developing Complex-PTSD and I have found the terminology on alienation to be confusing. In my attempt to better understand the dysfunctional nature of my family I would like to know the definitions in regards to alienation where a narcissist parent brainwashes the other co-parent into becoming their puppet by exploiting their denial and dissasociative disorder and then uses the child’s own mother as a weapon and an instrument of abuse to betray, endanger my life and inflict severe damage on their son (me).

This occurred at the height of my father’s abuse and it was my cue to initiating No-Contact however as I had already suffered decades of abuse since my childhood the cumulative damage they’ve caused has scarred me for life and left me experiencing regular nightmares of my mother’s betrayal.